Meet GardenSpace: Smart Garden Robot

Will a garden robot make growing fresh food easier? If it’s managing a smart watering schedule, yes, it probably will. You see, the number one reason for problems with garden plants is water… too much or too little. So, whether you’re the over-zealous type or the crazy busy forgot-to-water type, the new GardenSpace smart garden gadget offers watering assistance and more.

The GardenSpace garden robot can help you get more strawberries out of a berry patch. How? By chasing away those birds that manage to locate the ripe ones faster than you do. The watering system also offers an animal deterrent proven highly effective at keeping rabbits, deer, and the neighbors’ dogs out of the garden.

The guys in Australia who designed the new GardenSpace device added a motion sensor that detects anything larger than 6 inches moving into the garden space that isn’t a plant. It greets incoming aliens with a blast of cold water, sure to send them fleeing in the opposite direction. Unlike deer repellent sprinklers, such as Scarecrow, this little garden robot acts as a sentry for the immediate garden area but also detects smaller creatures.

It is capable of spraying up to 8 feet away from the unit with average water pressure, but the recommended garden size for best results in monitoring and irrigation is 120 square feet with 6-foot radius from the center. So, if your garden is larger, you will need multiple GardenSpace units to take full advantage of its benefits.

GardenSpace made their garden robot easy to set up and use. It is solar-powered and continues working even during a cloudy week. Currently designed for hose hookup to your water supply, one day they may have a reservoir system in places no hose can reach. It’s equipped with a head that rotates 360°, both a normal RGB camera and an infrared camera, and an infrared thermometer.

The thermometer and cameras work with a smartphone app over WiFi to monitor both soil moisture and plant health. It works best when the user identifies the plant in each space in the garden, so the garden robot knows what each space needs. Tracking individual plant health happens through its ability to monitor the temperature of the plant and soil, along with its chlorophyll content.

Getting the full benefits of this cool new garden robot does require subscribing to the GardenSpace Cloud Service. Crowdfunding campaign funders receive 12 months connection to the cloud at no additional charge. The cost of an ongoing subscription isn’t available at this point.

However, the device still works without the cloud. It will still water the garden and scare off critters around the clock. And record plant and ambient air temperature along with humidity. It will also take RGB and NIR images. The biggest loss of not being cloud-connected is their gardening feedback and advice service. The garden robot does come with LAN API, so the tech-savvy grower can build their own app.

GardenSpace’s recent Kickstarter campaign was successful, and units will start shipping in October of 2018. They retail for $399 and will sell from the garden robot makers’ website once they’ve filled early bird orders. Currently, their site URL forwards to the Kickstarter page, but this is temporary. The campaign closed on December 1st.